


Watching

by cytheriafalas



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't really know how to describe this, so this is the story that's been keeping me from writing Can't Keep the Sky from Me. I don't really know how to describe it other than by saying first of all this is a death fic but in a slightly different way that some others. Jonghyun has died and he watches Kibum try to move on without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching

Jonghyun discovered, much to his not-quite amusement, that everyone was wrong about the afterlife. Or, if anyone was right about it, he hadn’t met them. There was no great, benevolent god greeting him, or choirs of angels or any of those other things. It was as though he blinked and when his eyes opened again, he was standing in the middle of a dark room with twelve men in dark robes standing around him. He assumed they were men. The robes rendered their bodies sexless and their voices were neutral.

The leader explained a number of things to him in a dry, almost amused voice. Jonghyun was not amused by the things he told him, but he made three things abundantly clear. One: He really was dead. Two: He would be able to watch the effect his death had on his friends. Three: He was there for their amusement. _His suffering_ was their amusement.

Incidentally, he had no need for food or sleep, being dead, and he would begin watching immediately. He was taken to a room, empty but for a single chair facing an opaque window. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, or exactly what would be amusing to them, but when the window suddenly turned translucent, he understood and his heart _shattered_.

Kibum was curled up on his bed, his eyes open and stained bright red. Minho was sitting beside him, his hand stroking Kibum’s shoulder gently. Kibum didn’t even seem to be acknowledging him, his eyes remaining unfocused.

“Kibum, you need to eat something,” Minho said. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet and gentle, even for him. Kibum didn’t respond at all and Minho sighed. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Yes.”

Minho sighed again, but stood. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get better.”

“I don’t want to get better.”

“Kibum--”

Kibum rolled over and faced the other direction, his arms curling around his stomach. “Just go, Minho.”

He heard Minho sigh again, but he walked out, closing the door quietly behind him. Just after the door clicked shut, all Jonghyun could hear was the sound of Kibum screaming. He waited to see the door open again, but the handle never even jiggled.

“Why isn’t anyone going to him?”

There was dry, wheezing laughter behind him. One of the twelve, Jonghyun had no way of differentiating which, was standing there. He caught a glimpse of desiccated hands before they disappeared beneath the folds of the robe. “He’s not really screaming. Not out loud anyway. I haven’t heard this much pain from one person in a long time.” He laughed again and bile rose up in Jonghyun’s throat. “He must have really loved you.”

Kibum eventually cried himself to sleep, his hands holding one of Jonghyun’s favorite sweatshirts to his face. It had been Jonghyun’s favorite only because Kibum loved him in it. He could remember the last time he had worn it, when Kibum had sneaked up behind him, slipping his hands in the pockets with Jonghyun’s. They’d stood there for a few moments, watching the sun rise through their balcony window, his chin resting on Jonghyun’s shoulder.

Time didn’t pass normally where he was, wherever that was. It seemed like he blinked and Kibum was in their dorm’s living room. He hadn’t showered, or slept, in days. Taemin was following him looking half like a puppy with a sick master and half like a guard dog. The only thing Jonghyun could hear was a low, keening wail. It faded to the background when Kibum took a deep breath, his body shaking.

“Taemin-ah?”

“Hyung?”

“Why did he leave me?”

Taemin held his arms out, and Kibum practically crawled into them, sobbing into Taemin’s arms.

“He didn’t mean to,” Taemin whispered, holding Kibum gently. “He never meant to leave you.”

The wail had become repetitions of Jonghyun’s name, counter-timed to every shuddering sob wracking his body. If Jonghyun had been capable of dying again, which he had already been assured was impossible, he would have right then. He had never heard so much pain in Kibum’s voice, even when he’d gotten the word about his grandmother.

_Jonghyun, please, come back. I need you. Please, you can’t leave me like this._

“I’m sorry,” Jonghyun whispered, feeling tears well in his eyes. He went to brush them away but found nothing there. Apparently being dead also meant that he couldn’t cry. “Kibum-ah, I’m sorry!”

“He can’t hear you.” The voice this time was a little different, but just as dry and just as entertained as all of the previous ones had been.

“Why are you doing this?” Jonghyun demanded, turning to face him. Even turning away from the screen, he could still hear Key’s voice, both his actual voice and his internal one. “What did I _do_ to deserve this… this hell?”

“It’s not a matter of deserving, Jonghyun. When you are as old as we are, you need some entertainment in your life.”

“How the _fuck_ is this entertaining to you?” Jonghyun looked back at the screen. Not much time had passed, as far as he could tell. Kibum and Taemin were on their knees in the living room, Kibum’s body so hunched over that the only way Taemin could give him any comfort was to huddle over him. “How can watching him hurt so damn much be entertaining?”

“Oh, it’s not him we’re watching,” he said dismissively. “You’re our entertainment. We could not care less about the pain of the boy. Eventually, he will stop hurting and you will not be able to hear him any longer. That is when most of our entertainment happens.” He took a few steps further into the room. “It’s the first time he kisses someone who isn’t you, the first time he tells someone else he loves them, while your feelings for him stay exactly as they are now. _That’s_ our entertainment.”

“No.”

“But,” the man lifted his hand, raising a thin, bony finger, “if he stays true to you, he’s yours for all eternity.”

Jonghyun didn’t know what to say, so he turned back around in time to see Minho passing a paper bag to Kibum. It was obvious some time had passed, although he didn’t know how long. Kibum had lost weight, he had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was lank and the dye was fading at the tips and his roots were growing out.

“Manager-hyung says to make sure you take it whenever you need it. You need to start getting some sleep,” Minho said. Jonghyun wasn’t sure if that last bit came from Minho or the manager, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Kibum looked so exhausted that Jonghyun wanted to enfold him in his arms and make everything okay again.

Kibum nodded, his fingers curling around the paper and making it crinkle. “Thank you, Minho.”

His voice was so quiet, it almost didn’t sound like him. He sounded distracted, sad, lost. Taemin and Minho were standing awkwardly, not sure if they were supposed to stay or leave. Jinki had walked in, pausing by the doorway and looking over his band members.

_Take two before bed. I just have to wait. Next time they’re out, I never go with them anymore,—Jonghyun, I miss you so much—all I have to do is wait. I’ll take five or ten or the whole bottle and this will all be over. Jjong, this hurts too much._

“Kibum-ah, I’m not worth this,” Jonghyun whispered. He reached toward Kibum’s face, but there was no way to reach him. He couldn’t even reach the plane letting him see. “Please, Kibummie, don’t do this. Not for me.”

The dry laughter started up again, sending chills up Jonghyun’s spine. “This… This is delightful. It so rarely goes this far.”

_Please don’t be mad at me for this. It’s too hard without you._

Jinki lifted his hand to rest on Kibum’s shoulder, drawing his attention away from the bag.

“Kibum-ah, I was thinking about going to his grave today.”

Even Jonghyun could see Kibum’s entire body tense, his chin lifting and a sharp breath making his nostrils flare. “Why?”

“It’s been too long since I’ve been there, and I don’t want to go alone.”

“Why don’t you take--” When Kibum looked around to pick one of the other members, he saw that both Taemin and Minho had vanished. Jonghyun could see the resignation on his face, even before he said, “Okay, hyung.”

Jinki smiled at him, his hand still on Kibum’s shoulder, and he pulled out his phone, dialing. He put it up to his ear to wait for someone to answer. “No, nothing’s wrong. Kibum and I just wanted to go to J--” he paused, swallowing, “Jonghyun-ah’s grave.” There was a pause while the manager spoke. “The fans are still there? That’s okay. I would still really like to go today. Fifteen minutes? Okay.”

The next thing Jonghyun saw, Jinki and Kibum were climbing out of the van. The manager had been right. There were still fans there. It should have made him proud, maybe. It only made him even sadder, to see these people standing at his grave. They backed away when the car rolled to a stop and Jinki and Kibum climbed out. Some of them left, but most of them just stood far enough away to give the boys their privacy.

Jinki’s arm curled around Kibum’s shoulders as they walked the last few paces toward the grave. The earth was beginning to show signs of the first blades of grass growing again, but it looked like it had settled. It had been a while, apparently.

Kibum took one look at the headstone and buried his face against Jinki’s shoulder. Jinki held him tight, letting him cry.

“What do I do, hyung?” Kibum asked.

“I don’t know,” Jinki said. “I-I’ve been talking to some of the others… Yunho-hyung and Leeteuk-hyung, and they don’t know either. This hasn’t happened to any of us before. I don’t know what to do for you, Kibum-ah.”

“I can’t do this,” Kibum said. “I can’t do this anymore. I want to go home.”

“I’ll talk to them about letting you go home,” Jinki promised. “Staying here isn’t good for you. Maybe after a little while, once the company figures out what we need to do, you can come back then?”

Kibum nodded, his body still wrapped in Jinki’s arms. He looked tiny and fragile and Jonghyun ached to be the one holding him.

“It’s going to get better,” Jinki said. “I promise you, everything is going to get better soon.”

Jonghyun didn’t know if it was seeing his grave or Jinki’s words, or even that first touch on Kibum’s shoulder that did it, but later that night when he was watching Kibum roll the bottle of pills back and forth between his hands, Jonghyun decided he would forever be grateful to Jinki. Kibum opened the bottle and poured the prescribed two into his palm. He still cried himself to sleep that night, but at least sleep came and he woke up the next morning with somewhat lighter circles beneath his eyes.

He got better, bit by bit after that. He went home and recovered. He cried less and less, and when he did it was usually in his mother’s arms and she did what she could to soothe the pain away. Eventually Jonghyun couldn’t even hear Kibum’s thoughts any longer.

“He’s forgetting about you,” a voice breathed into his ear. Jonghyun hardly even bothered to distinguish between them anymore. He hated all of them. “The boy who was willing to kill himself to be with you has forgotten.”

Jonghyun’s eyes closed. Part of him was glad that Kibum was getting better and that he was hurting less. Another part of him wailed that _his_ Kibum was forgetting him.

It took more than two years for the company to decide that SHINee was ready for their comeback, as a four-man team. All of the vocals and dances for their songs had to be rewritten and they had to find out how the fans would react. The most important part, at least as far as both Jonghyun and Jinki were concerned, was making certain Kibum was ready.

Much of those two years had passed in jumps and blurs to Jonghyun, but he watched every second of the day of their comeback. He missed all of them so desperately. Of course he missed Kibum, but he hadn’t even realized how much he missed the rest of them. Little Taemin was twenty-three and honestly not so little anymore. Minho still hadn’t grown completely out of his awkward quiet phase and Jonghyun was beginning to think he never would. Jinki was… well, still Jinki, if older and wiser.

Jonghyun didn’t know how the creatures knew when he was hurting the most, but they always did. They’d spent the first few months constantly with him, one or two at a time, but now they came in droves. The closer they got to their performance time and the more Jonghyun could see the familiar nervous energy in the faces he knew, the more the lonely ache in his chest grew.

“Jinki-hyung?” Kibum asked, startling Jonghyun out of his thoughts.

Jinki turned to face him, gesturing a stylist off. She nodded, backing away and turning her attention to helping another stylist fight Taemin’s hair into submission.

“What’s up, Kibum-ah?”

“I-I don’t think I can do this,” Kibum whispered, clenching his hands in front of him. “Not without him. It’s not right to have only four of us.”

Jinki stood and held his arms out. Kibum went to him, pressing his forehead into Jinki’s shoulder.

“I know it’s not okay,” Jinki said, “but isn’t this what he would have wanted for us?”

Jonghyun’s heart clenched. It was what he wanted, more than anything. He wanted to see Kibum on stage again, where he belonged. He wanted to be there with him, he wanted to sing. He hadn’t sung in two years, he realized. He thought about opening his mouth and singing, but he suspected his voice wouldn’t come.

“SHINee, you have three minutes.”

Jinki pulled back, holding Kibum by the shoulders. “Minho-ah, Taemin-ah, could you come here please?”

They all gathered around Jinki. Jonghyun remembered these gatherings so well, and the speeches Jinki gave, telling them to make sure not to miss this one part in the song that gave them all trouble or reminding them about the changes they’d made to the dance, but this time Jinki just looked them each in the eye and said, “For Jonghyun-ah.”

He wanted to cry, seeing the tears sparkle in four sets of eyes as they echoed Jinki’s words. They folded together into a tight hug, arms all tangled together, with Kibum pressed in the middle.

“Two minutes! On stage, please!”

The comeback stage was technically perfect. The fans loved it. Jonghyun could see exhilaration on everyone’s faces, even Kibum’s. It wasn’t until the very end, the last fifteen seconds of the last song, that Jonghyun saw Kibum begin to crumble. He held out until the end, but as soon as they hit their last mark, he crumpled to his knees, burying his face in his hands before the lights could go dark. Jinki went to his side, helping him to his feet and offstage.

The comeback was successful, they won awards, they had their concerts, they traveled with the next SMTOWN, but Jonghyun could see that somehow they’d stopped caring. After the adrenaline faded from their comeback stage, they were done. The company didn’t question it when Jinki told them they had nothing left, although they were never officially retired. TVXQ and Super Junior retired, even SNSD retired, then f(x), and then finally groups that had debuted long after SHINee, but they were never disbanded.

Jonghyun wasn’t sure if it was because the company didn’t want to break them up any more than they already had been, or if they had just forgotten. It didn’t seem to matter. The four of them went on with their lives as though they had been retired. Jinki and Kibum went to theater, SM hired Taemin as a choreographer, Minho stayed with television and films.

It took Kibum four more years to even begin to seem as though he were moving on. He was going out on dates with a man whose name Jonghyun never bothered to learn. He hated him because he was making Kibum smile, because as much as Jonghyun had wanted Kibum to find someone else, it meant that Jonghyun would be alone. Forever. He wanted to be a better person than he was and say that his own happiness was worth less than Kibum’s, but it hadn’t been years for him. It had been… well, Jonghyun didn’t know. Time didn’t seem to pass for him at all.

“I told you he was forgetting you.”

Jonghyun sighed, leaning back in the chair he had no memory of sitting in. He rubbed at his eyes, but it didn’t reduce the ache from six years’ worth of unshed tears. “So that was you.”

“I have taken an interest in you.”

“Kibum-hyung,” the man said, reaching out for Kibum’s hand. Kibum paused, letting their hands fold together.

“Hm?”

Without much warning, he leaned forward and kissed Kibum. Jonghyun felt his heart clench. Kibum almost drew away for a second, but then he was kissing back. Kibum’s hands were raking through the other man’s hair the same way they’d slid through Jonghyun’s. Jonghyun didn’t know why he thought he’d been special. Of course Kibum was going to kiss the way he always had. He’d probably kissed of his exes the exact same way.

“I can’t watch this.”

“But you can,” a voice hissed, almost right in his ear. It was the closest they had ever come to him. Jonghyun’s skin crawled with disgust. “You are such a rare treat for us. Had you lived, the two of you would have been together forever. We so rarely get such extended agony.”

“What do you mean, ‘forever’?”

“Fate was written many eons before even we were created.”

The thing lapsed into silence and Jonghyun had to turn his attention back to the scene in front of him. At some point during his conversation, they had stepped apart. Kibum’s eyes had widened and he was staring at the other man. Jonghyun supposed, if he possibly could be spending the rest of Kibum’s life watching him with this other man, he should probably figure out what his name was.

“G-goodnight,” Kibum stammered.

“Goodnight, hyung.”

Kibum walked back into his small, single apartment and closed the door behind him. He stood there for a second before he walked straight to his bedroom and dropped himself onto the bed, burying his face into the pillow.

 _Jonghyun, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry_.

Jonghyun hadn’t heard Kibum’s thoughts in so long he’d almost forgotten what it sounded like.

 _I’m so sorry I couldn’t…_ Jonghyun heard a dry laugh in his head. _I don’t know if I’m apologizing because I tried to move on or because I couldn’t. He’s not you. It’s been so long and I can’t find anyone. I don’t think there_ is _anyone. I miss you, Jjong. I miss you so much._

It wasn’t _fair_. They should have been together, they were supposed to be together. They should have had years, SHINee should have still been performing, they should have still loved what they were doing. It just wasn’t fair.

For the first time in years, Kibum cried himself to sleep. He stayed in bed until almost three in the afternoon, and Jonghyun could almost see the guilt wracking his body. He wanted to tell him that it was okay. As much as Jonghyun wanted Kibum for himself, and he’d always been a little bit of a jealous boyfriend, it was so much more important now that he be happy. He would rather be alone for the rest of eternity than see one more moment of unhappiness in Kibum’s life.

That afternoon, Kibum made two calls. The first was to Minho, which Kibum began in his characteristic no-nonsense style.

“It’s almost the anniversary of his death.”

Jonghyun could hear the long pause from the other end of the line. “Yes.”

“We should all go.”

“Okay.”

“Really?”

Minho made an agreeing sound. “I’ll call the others and we can go. It’ll be good to see everyone again, and it’s really been too long since I’ve been to his grave.”

The second call was obviously the more difficult one. Kibum paced up and down his living room for almost fifteen minutes before he dialed in the number.

Kibum started the conversation with, “I can’t do this.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“This,” Kibum said, gesturing to himself and the invisible representation of his boyfriend in front of him. “Our… I’m not ready.”

“Is this because of the kiss? Kibum-hyung, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

“No, it’s not that. I mean, it is. But it’s not. I’m just not ready to move on. I thought I was. I don’t think I ever will be.”

“Jonghyun.”

Both Kibum and Jonghyun flinched at the finality of that tone. Kibum swallowed heavily. “Yes.”

“I really like you,” the man finally said, “but I guess I understand. If you ever think you’re ready to move on, give me a call. I’m not promising to wait, but if everything works out, maybe we can give this another try.”

“I’m really sorry,” Kibum whispered. He crumpled down onto the couch, holding his head in his hands.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Hyunshik--”

“Goodbye.”

Kibum let his phone drop to the couch and he sat back, his eyes shut tight. He didn’t cry. After that, Kibum cried once a year, regular as clockwork. All four of them went to the cemetery on November fifteenth, but that wasn’t the day Kibum cried. He cried on April eighth when he went to Jonghyun’s grave by himself.

Taemin married at twenty-nine, the first out of all of them, which Jonghyun found both highly amusing and a little typical of their maknae. The girl was a darling, from what Jonghyun saw of her. She was a dancer as well, but far removed from the company. They had their first baby the next year, the same year that Minho got married and that Jinki finally proposed.

Kibum doted on the child, spoiling him as much as he possibly could in that one year he had left. The fall that Kibum turned thirty-two, a second strain of the same illness that had taken Jonghyun almost ten years earlier struck Seoul. It had been completely unexpected and when Kibum first started coughing, the doctors were certain he’d just caught a cold.

By the time they had officially declared that it was back, Kibum’s cough had deteriorated into the hacking cough that Jonghyun remembered all too well. It made his chest ache just to think about how much it had hurt. The treatments were too late for Kibum, who had already been weakened by the sickness the first time around, and Jonghyun got to watch the man he loved die.

Jonghyun had very little memory of his own death, just the early stages of the illness, which he had caught on a trip to visit some relatives out in the countryside several months prior to the rest of the band. They had diagnosed him too late, but they’d managed to save the other four, for which Jonghyun was honestly grateful. He remembered the annoying itch in the depths of his chest for the first few weeks, and then the coughing after that, where his lungs had barely been able to draw in any air. He’d had to be on oxygen for a while, but the cough eventually went away, and they thought they’d been safe. Everything after that was fuzzy.

He had no memory of the convulsions Kibum experienced, but he remembered the burning fever. Kibum’s lips cracked, his body incapable of staying hydrated, even with all of the liquids they were pumping into him. They were keeping him on so many painkillers that he was hardly ever lucid, even if the fever would have allowed him any coherency.

The remainder of their band had to watch through observation windows. It wasn’t only because they couldn’t risk getting sick, especially Taemin with a son of his own, but the sickness was destroying Kibum’s immune system and anything they carried could have gotten him even sicker. Even at the very end, after the convulsions had stopped, but the fever was higher than ever, they could only go in one at a time and only if they were in cleanroom suits.

He held on longer than many of the doctors had thought he was going to initially, but after seven months of illness, of which Jonghyun had the dubious honor of watching every single second, the screen or window or whatever Jonghyun had been watching went blank. He spun to face all of the beings behind him. More and more had gathered as he watched Kibum die and seen the agonizing pain he only barely remembered.

“What happened?” Jonghyun demanded, finally standing. His body should have ached from nine years of sitting in one place, but he felt nothing but the pain in his chest and the constant burning in his eyes from the tears he couldn’t cry.

“He’s dead,” one of the voices said.

“At just after nine in the morning on April eighteenth, by your people’s reckoning.

“What’s going on?” a voice asked from the back of the group. It was a voice so familiar that Jonghyun felt the breath he wasn’t actually breathing catch in his chest. “I-I don’t understand.”

There was a shifting as the beings stepped aside and another person walked forward, staring at the dark robes and tall forms. Jonghyun let out a choked sound, taking a step toward him. He expected something to stop him, but nothing did and suddenly he was on his knees at the other man’s feet.

Kibum looked down at him, stared at him for a few seconds, uncomprehending. He looked so confused that for a second Jonghyun was afraid Kibum didn’t know him.

“ _Jonghyun_?” Kibum gasped, reaching out for him. His hand stopped a few inches short, just hovering in the air above Jonghyun’s head.

“It’s me,” Jonghyun whispered. “Kibum-ah, it’s me.”

Then Kibum was sinking to his knees right in front of him, taking Jonghyun’s hands in his. They sat surrounded by the silent creatures for a long time, just looking each other over. Kibum looked like he had the day Jonghyun died, as though none of the ten years after had happened.

“I missed you so much,” Kibum whispered, finally leaning forward until their foreheads touched. Jonghyun lifted his hands and cupped Kibum’s cheeks.

“I know. I saw everything.”

“Everything?” Kibum echoed.

“Enough of it to be everything,” Jonghyun confirmed. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

Before he was quite sure what had happened, Kibum had punched him hard in the shoulder, the only part of him he could accurately reach from their position.

“Don’t you _dare_ apologize for that,” Kibum growled, looking into Jonghyun’s eyes. “Don’t you dare. That was not your fault. I would do it again and again and again if I got you back at the end of it all.”

“The two of you are free to go whenever you wish,” a voice said. “I told you that if he remained true to you, that he was yours. You provided us with many years of entertainment, and I trust that you do not hate us so much as you did before.”

“Fuck you,” Jonghyun snapped, finally standing. He pulled Kibum up as well, positioning himself between the younger man and the robed men in front of them. “You think I don’t hate you just because I got him back?”

There was the sound of laughter from one side. “I told you he would never forgive us.” He recognized that voice as well. “Jonghyun, you may go. You will know which door is yours.”

“Come on,” Jonghyun said, turning to face Kibum. He was clearly afraid, still not entirely certain what was happening or where he was, but he nodded at whatever he saw on Jonghyun’s face and held his hand tighter.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” Kibum said, “but let’s go. I want you out of here.”

Jonghyun leaned in and kissed him just once, a gentle press of his lips to Kibum’s. “We’re going to be okay, Kibum-ah.”

“Of course we will,” Kibum said, squeezing Jonghyun’s hand and taking his first step in the direction they had been pointed.


End file.
